Now, he may have also lost the chance to be featured in a documentary about the implosion of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange he founded, because of his alleged leaks to the Times.
Last month, a federal judge issued a temporary gag order prohibiting Bankman-Fried from making public statements regarding his ongoing trial, after he allegedly provided personal writings by former girlfriend Caroline Ellison to the New York Times. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers have accepted the gag order, but denied that he leaked anything to the press, calling the accusations “extremely thin” and implying the newspaper may have had “alternate sources” for the information Bankman-Fried provided. They also called for all witnesses in the trial to be subject to the order.
Now, another entity has taken issue with the gag order as well. Through a law firm, director and documentarian Nanette Burstein — who’s directed everything from episodes of “New Girl” and “Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23” to documentaries about Hillary Clinton and late anti-virus software founder-turned-libertarian presidential candidate John McAfee — and film studio Propagate together filed a letter Friday in opposition, alleging that the order puts a planned documentary about Bankman-Fried in jeopardy. (The document was first shared by tech and crypto journalist Zack Guzman.)
Burstein is working on a film for Propagate about FTX’s spectacular rise and fall, according to the letter, which the filmmaker and content studio assure “will be unbiased and objective” and “be exclusively of historical and documentary value.” Bankman-Fried had agreed to be interviewed for the documentary, the law firm notes, alongside “people with differing perspectives on FTX and on Mr. Bankman-Fried.”
But, the letter reads, “that plan has now been derailed — at least temporarily, and perhaps permanently, depending on the outcome of these proceedings — by the government’s request for a gag order, even though the documentary poses no danger of interfering in any way with the criminal proceedings.”
The New York Times first cried foul at the gag order Wednesday. Attorneys for the paper argued that the gag order be revised to “protect the public’s First Amendment right to receive information about a financial scandal that stripped billions of dollars from the economy and harmed innumerable members of the public.”
If the judge sides with federal prosecutors, Bankman-Fried could have his bail revoked — and be sent to jail.
Hear of anything going on at a San Francisco or Silicon Valley tech company? Contact SFGATE tech editor Joshua Bote securely on Signal at 707-742-3756 or email him at joshua.bote@sfgate.com.